A different kind of luxury

1:06 AM

Today we met with Nakamura-san, a man who lives in kamikatsu as an artist. He makes things for fun so he doesn't have a normal income, and he grows all of his own food.

The guy is amazing. It's like living with both nothing and everything! Simple living, is what people call it. We went up a very narrow mountain, and there wasn't a neighborhood for a couple of miles, so he really more or less lives in the middle of no where. There is a community though, so he's not really too alone. People that are happy to live this way are really inspiring to me.

Together Nakamura showed us how to prepare to make a book with fabric and some A4 paper!

We used a starch-like glue substance to put japanese paper on the fabric

I got a video of how to make a book so I will definitely post that once I get to a computer, for anyone who wants to learn to make their own :)

While I was there, I was interviewed by a woman from the tokushima prefecture newspaper. She asked me how being here felt, and doing book making, and if it made me feel like i was living life in japan from long ago. I told her that I was a generally artsy person so this wasn't the first time I did crafts like these so I didn't really get a japanese feeling. But I did tell her that it feel nostalgic to me. My grandfather in puerto rico lives a rather simple life, and grows his own food so it reminded me of that, and In summer camp I also did a lot of crafts.

The interviewer asked me if I felt refreshed or relaxed, and I do! I told her it's very hard to find people who live like this in America ( mostly because of health insurance), and living as a student can be stressful. So coming here away from it all, does feel really refreshing.

We took a break for lunch and went to the Oribe's home! The couple makes their own charcoal out of bamboo, and different types of things like pumpkins and other vegetables!

They made us pizza from their charcoal oven!! And we got to make our own pizza :)

The humidity and all the rain here makes the mist float up from the trees in the mountains.

Coming back to Nakamura's to finish our paper binding, I went upstairs to where I assume Nakamura sleep. There the futon was all put away to make way for people to come and do more crafts.

Nakamura has books and books of his own art and notes. Inside books he made himself no less!! His art was very modern and simplistic. Being an artist myself, I was really touched looking at his art. A lot of minute detail, and love put in each book.

All of us got to color a piece inspired bt Nakamura. I got to translate some of the english writen books for Nakamura so he could better appreciate what people in the past wrote for him :)

I was inspired... My art is not as impressionistic or provocative as Nakamura's, but I can resonate with the love put into art. The patterns are inspired by Nakamura's patterns in his art book that he had everyone try.

For the rest of the day we're going to just chill out in the community center. It's raining a lot so we can't really do much but the quiet is really nice.